Dezhou, Shandong is embarking on an ambitious solar power project which aims to be a model for the rest of China. The Washington Post reports:
Across China, villages are being turned into pollution-belching industrial zones, but nature’s retreat on the outskirts of Dezhou boasts a paradoxical purpose — protecting nature.
“This is an experiment. It is a big laboratory,” said Huang Ming, an oil industry engineer turned solar energy tycoon, who is driving one of China’s boldest efforts to promote, and profit from, green technology.
At the center of his outsize ambitions is Solar Valley, a massive exercise in social, economic and ecological engineering. As part of the project, tens of thousands of farmers have been moved into concrete apartment blocks and their land is being converted into what Huang and Dezhou’s planners hope will be China’s clean-technology answer to California’s Silicon Valley.
The $740 million plan has attracted about 100 companies and spawned factories, a research center and wide boulevards illuminated by solar-powered lights. It highlights the promise — as well as the limits — of China’s efforts to reconcile breakneck economic development with environmental concerns.
